Sleep, little sister, don't dream
by Valhalla
Summary: "He can't remember exactly what it was like when Penny was born." In another universe, Daniel and Penny grow up together; spoilers for the finale. Daniel, Penny, Eloise, Charles, Charlotte; Daniel/Charlotte, Desmond/Penny


**Title:** Sleep, little sister, don't dream  
**Characters/Pairings: **Daniel, Penny; Eloise, Charles, Charlotte (Dan/Charlotte, Penny/Desmond)  
**Summary:** _He can't remember exactly what it was like when Penny was born._In another universe, Daniel and Penny grow up together.  
**Rating:** T  
**Spoilers:**Up to the series finale.  
**Disclaimer:**Not mine.

He can't remember exactly what it was like when Penny was born; still, harbours some faint impressions - fine, soft hair whispering against his cheek and she was _so tiny_ (eyes and mouth and fingers impossibly small, so small every time he held her he was afraid she'd break) and she smelled like baby shampoo and powder and just _clean_.

And his mother - not her mother too, though he understands now that Eloise Widmore has always been, above all else, a practical woman, and so Penny joined them from England half of every summer and alternate holidays and never took the family name - had leaned down and framed her arms around his, showed him how to crook the baby just so, tucked in safe and secure, told him with all seriousness, _take good care of your sister, Daniel_.

He hadn't understood the word then, not really. He does now.

They're so close in age it doesn't take long before they're attached at the hip, as his father says it (he wants to point out, again, that they're not; there's one of him and one of her and that makes two, after all), and "Penny visits" are his favourite. Most of their days disappear into an hourless haze of climbing trees and ambling through the edges of his parents' estate (she's much more adventurous but still needs a big brother to protect her, he figures). Penny even manages to convince Eloise to let them sleep outside one night when the heat leaves them tossing and turning, sweating and restless in their beds - "_please_Mrs. Widmore?," she pleads, peering over the kitchen countertop with her sweetest expression; "alright," Eloise sighs, toweling off her hands and throwing them upwards, exasperated, "but don't come crying to me if you get eaten alive by the bugs."

The stars are so big and full above them, and there are so many - Daniel tries counting and gives up somewhere past a hundred and five - across the sky like it could go on forever and ever and the night's humidity seems to cling to their sleeping bags, against their skin, and he feels surrounded by all of it, lost to it all.

Penny's sprawled out on her back, hands folded behind her head, and she doesn't tear her eyes away from the moon and the planets and the Milky Way when she tells him _I'm gonna leave one day, you know. I'm gonna see the whole universe, and go far away._

It's a swell of fear that hits him - forgets sometimes, too often, that he's supposed to be the one she needs and not the other way around - and _you can't leave_, he mutters, scratches at the sand and grass with a stick he found, pretends like he doesn't even care if she goes and leaves him, fine, whatever -

"Don't worry, Danny." She's smiling at him when he grudgingly turns towards her, big grin lit up.

_I'll take you too._

It's a regular thing, when Eloise takes them out to run errands, or to the park - Penny always up ahead, exploring, Daniel trooping behind, obedient one-two step ghosting in his mother's footfalls - that the woman further up the supermarket line or the father at the next swing will look at the three of them, his mother and then Daniel and Penny (all golden curls and blue eyes, looks so in the family he worries sometimes he might have been adopted), compliment _her beautiful children_.

Daniel doesn't miss the plural, or his mother's tight-lipped _thank you_, though can't figure out if she's mad or sad.

"Maybe my mommy is your mommy too," he whispers to Penny later that day, tucked away in their pillow-and-blankets fort she's convinced keeps monsters and other bad things out. "That way we would be brother and sister for real."

"We _are_ brother and sister for real, dummy," she hisses back, grabbing one of her storybooks and turning her back to him with a huff, leaving Daniel puzzling over why everyone's always upset _and_ angry and can't make up their mind between the two. Later, Penny's snoring beside him, book folder over her stomach and forgotten, his mother peeks in between two propped-up bedsheets and smiles _think it's time for both of you to have a nap_, gathering Penny up first and laying her carefully onto the sofa, and them him, and sleep's mostly gotten to him when he turns against her neck and mumbles, "I wish I'd known Penny all my life, mommy."

His mother sort of sounds like she can't breath for a minute, holds perfectly still, and _well of course you have_, she scolds in reply, taking him to his bed, and even his little boy memories seem to catch the sparkle of tears that gather and crease her eyes when she turns away.

His father misses his college graduation for some business meeting in Asia (he doesn't care, nope, not at all; not like Charles Widmore has ever seen any value in something as _useless_ - his word, flung around during one of dozens of fights - as music and _christ boy, your sister managed to get into business school but you're going to play bloody piano?_), but Penny's there to greet him once he's off the stage of the main hall at the conservatory, diploma in hand and cap already halfway slipping off his head, tackles him into a hug while his mother watches, bemused.

"I knew you could do it," she beams, straightens and fusses with the shoulders of his gown, squinting back tears, and sure his friends and classmates are there, his mom too, but he smiles back, embraces her again, the _I knew because you did_ crescendoing deep and bright through his chest.

Of course it's Penny who's with him when he spots Charlotte for the first time, turns a corner in the museum while they're scouting his concert venue and it's like all the oxygen's been sucked out of him, when he sees her on a bench, book in one hand and chocolate bar in the other, feels like it should be a memory, the way the midday suns glides over her skin and that _exact_ shade of blue her eyes are (his favourite, he decides right then and there) and the quirk of her brow while she reads, idly flipping pages, not just knows but _loves_, too.

"Dan -"

He almost stumbles and looks up to meet his sister's half-confused, mostly amused gaze; _what's got you, Dan? Looks like you've seen a ghost or something._

"No, I," he stutters, hands flying in every direction. "It's just, uh, nothing. It's nothing. Forget about it."

That night he dreams in equations and numbers, envisions red curls at his fingertips, and when Desmond comes looking for his sister a few weeks later, he doesn't think it's a coincidence at all.

The concert goes as well as it can between the boozed-up bassist and the girl going into labour halfway during their set, but mostly it's just _Charlotte_ - her name like an incantation, something magic and almost not-real, repeats it over and over in his mind to make sure it is - and he almost forgets his sister didn't bother to show up.

When he gets back to his beach house, though, Penny's waiting out front on his lawn, in jeans and a leather jacket and definitely not like she intended to be anywhere but hovering around the hydrangeas she insisted on planting in the spring.

Daniel's usually good at curbing his anger (has to be, with Charles Widmore for a father), but he can't keep the frustration and hurt from lacing his words - "where were you tonight?"

She perks at the sound and turns, rushes to his side, all apologies; "I'm so, so sorry, Daniel. Something's happened and I -"

"So what, you couldn't even call?" He shrugs off her grasp, shuffles his tuxedo bag into his other arm, tries to free his keys from his jeans pocket and pretends the hurt on her face isn't there. "You said you'd come."

"I know, and I'm so sorry." Penny shifts her weight against the doorframe, watches silently while he finally tugs out his keys and slides one into the lock. "But I'm leaving, and all I had time to say is goodbye. That's why I'm here."

Daniel eases open the front door, still feeling wounded. "What, like on vacation?"

"Leaving for good. I have to go, and I won't be coming back, ever again." Her words take on an urgency he ignores, figures for dramatics as he steps inside. "You'll understand, eventually, though. I promise you will."

The bag gets tossed over the staircase railing, throws a mostly casual _jesus Pen, sounds like your suicide note or something_ over his shoulder, aiming for levity and maybe not quite making it, still thrown off by her quiet calm, the sense of eerie finality that's creeping through his bones.

She stays silent in reply, refuses to meet him eyes, and _no, no_, he shakes his head, finally realizing something is so very not right, _whatever you're thinking of doing, don't do it. Please Penny, just - just don't._

"Danny." His name gets caught in a flood of tears, her eyes brimming and then spilling over, hands finding and framing his shoulders like she wants to shake some sense into him. "It's not like that. I ... I have to leave. I have to go somewhere else. But I'll be fine. I'll be safe and happy and where I'm supposed to be."

Penny steps towards him and her hug feels like it's crushing something out of him but he clings to it, clings to the last vestiges of her (_I love you big brother_, she whispers, _take care of yourself, and be good to Charlotte_, doesn't give him a chance to ask how she knows her name) before she pulls away, rubs at red-rimmed eyes, one last smile breaking her features as she slips out the door and that's the last image he has of her, waves of long blonde hair and then nothing, ever again.

On the fifth anniversary of her disappearance Daniel takes Charlotte and their daughter with him to the memorial marker near the beach in Newport his mother refuses to visit; _Dad put this here about a year after. Guess he wanted some place where she ... still existed._ He'd explained everything, after a couple dates - how Penny had left L.A. without a trace, no passport or money or wallet, even her keys still in the same clay dish next to the front door in her condo. How Desmond hadn't shown up for work the next day or the day after, and how all of Widmore Industries resources had never been able to find either of them, or the other dozen people that disappeared from the area that same night.

Penelope - it's the only time he'd really ever seen his father cry, when they'd named her - is perched high in Charlotte's arms, tiny hands tangled into her hair, blue eyes open wide and wondering at the world, while Daniel lays a bouquet of hydrangeas alongside the smooth, dark stone marking Penny's birth, date of death left ominously blank. Unfinished, he thinks it looks. Like her life, what she left behind. (_I'll take you with me_, is what she'd said, but he doesn't want to go, just wants her back from wherever she's gone that's somehow better than there.)

Charlotte passes their daughter into his arms as he steps back, her grasp coming up to cradle both of them, cheek grazing his, murmurs _I'm so sorry, Dan_, like she always does when they talk about Penny and_it's okay_, he replies, offering half a smile, kissing them both in turn.

There's a passing wisp of a smell of lotion and that same shampoo as Penelope nestles back against his neck, curls one fist around the collar of his shirt, Charlotte brushing away his tears he hadn't even noticed were there with the pads of her fingers, thinks (and it's ridiculous, he knows, but still can't shy away from it) that when he's ready to go - whatever that word means - Penny will be waiting. That he's not ready yet (pulls Charlotte closer, almost on instinct, kisses the crown of Penelope's head again) but he will be, one day, and she'll be there.

She said he'd understand, and he knows one day he will.


End file.
